No Pants Day

There are all sorts of regional variations in language, but nowadays countries impose some sort of standard version of the spelling and grammar, though not the pronunciation - usually not through the government, but through universities, the media, schools and so on. So it's perfectly reasonable to talk about British English alongside American English, Australian English and so on. English English is only misleading in that it excludes the Welsh. Most Welsh people's mother-tongue is English and there is no difference in the spelling and grammar from the English spoken in England - only in accent and colloquial phrases. Wales is not part of England - so British English is more accurate. Scotland, with some alternative forms gaining wide acceptabnce and with a strongly devolved government, perhaps close to independence, is a marginal case.

A similar case to English exists with Spanish, as Latin American Spanish is undoubtedly Spanish, but differs from the language of Spain in various ways. I can't see an obvious alternative to talking about "Spanish Spanish".

I think that the Spanish as spoken in Spain is known as Castilian.

Don't be ridiculous. Although I don't know anything about Swedish-Swedish vs Finnish-Swedish and so forth, I know that English everywhere is spoken with various accents, ESPECIALLY in England, with the only exception being that corner of Ohio north and west of Columbus where it is spoken totally devoid of any accent whatsoever.

Well, there is reference to the Queen's English, and I've also heard of American English. I've always thought of myself as having an Australian accent, but on a trip to the States my wife and I were regularly thought of as English and one lady even thought we were from Minnesota from our accents!

Oh dear, I had no idea what I had started with this. Sorry

I think you're right, tiptopper, but that's probably contorversial in Spain, as Castile is only one part of the area of Spain that speaks Spanish as a mother-tongue. Bit like calling British English "Surreyan".

Presumably Australian men wear thongs in the summer?

@njrick
I think you are confusing accents with dialects. English is spoken in various DIALECTS in England. A person speaks the language of another country with an ACCENT. For example an Englishmen would speak French with an English accent but the same could not be said if he were speaking his mother tongue.
So it's quite simple there is English – the language of England and that's that. Those countries which have adopted English are speaking the language with an accent and that includes the one in which I live – South Africa.
Bringing it closer to home would you ever say that a person using one of the Algonquian family of languages was speaking AMERICAN Anishinaabemowin?

Hotspur: that is also confused. We talk of "a Yorkshire accent", for example, or an "upper-class accent". There is also Yorkshire dialect. It's misleading to talk of America having "adopted" English. Nigeria and India adopted English, though generally not as a first mother tongue. American English derives from English and Scottish settlers who took the English of the time with them. It's since been influenced by German and Scandinavian languages, but English has changed a lot since around 1600, sometimes under foreign influence. American English is as valid as the versions spoken in Surrey or Tyneside. True, many non-English speakers arriving in America adopted the English already spoken there, but not many descendants of the Huguenots in England speak French before English and nor do many descendants of East European Jews here speak Yiddish rather than English.

I'm not sure that the distinction is terribly important. All I know is that on my visits to Scotland in the 70's (courtesy of Uncle Sam) I could only understand about 50% of what the locals said to me. It wasn't until the second trip that I realized that the communications problem was only one-way; they seemed to understand me just fine! At first I took the attitude that "one of us is speaking terrible English, and it apparently isn't me". Then I finally twigged to the real reason: They were all watching USA TV shows and Hollywood movies, so they heard American speech on a daily basis. Me, on the other hand...